Bill Laymon, a high-profile rock musician who grew up in Springfield, says he's "coming back from being dead." And he is starting to speak out about the plight of the uninsured.

Laymon says he'll never forget the day in 2005 when he trudged into the emergency room at Maui Memorial Medical Center in Hawaii, sick with typhus and encephalitis."I was so sick, I wasn't sure what month it was," he recalled in a recent interview.

"I had suffered neurological damage by that time."

The doctor gave him some pain pills and refused to do any more.

According to Laymon, the doctor told him: "'There's nothing wrong with you. You're uninsured. Get out of here.'"